5^ 



V/^ 








iTatiouiil i{<jiC0n^tnutian. 






A DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED AT WESLEY CHAPEL, 



WASHINGTON, D. C, 



©It tf)f Isi bag of 3unf, 1865. 



BT THE PASTOR, 



B. H. NADAL, D. D. 



Washington, D. C. 
wm. ii. moork, printer, 484 elkventh stkekt 

18C5. 



^atianal ^vttm^txmtmx. 



A DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED AT WESLEY CHAPEL, 



WASHINGTON, D. C, 



>it t!)t Ut bap of Sunt, 1865. 



DI THE PASTOR, 



R. n. NAHAL, n. I). 



Wasiiinoton, D. C. 
wm. 11. mooni;, puintkr, 481 elkventii street. 

18G5. 



tl.fcfe8 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



Washington, D. C, June 1st, 18G5. 
To the Rev. B. H. Nadal, D. D. 

Pastor of Wesley Chapel. 
Dear Sir : The undersigned, a committee appointed at the close of the ser- 
vices this day in your church, politely request a copy of your Sermon for 
publication and circulation. 

We have the honor to be. 

Yours, most respectfully, 

A. M. SCOTT, 
J. W. RICKS, 
A. F. MOULDEN, 
GEORGE E. H. DAY, 
W. H. DE MOTTE, 
BENJ. LIPPINCOTT. 



To A. M. Scott, J. W, Ricks, A. F. Moulden, George E. H. Day, W. H. 
De Mott, and Benj. Lippincott, Esqs. 

Gentlemen : A copy of my Sermon, delivered on the first instant, is here- 
with transmitted and placed at your disposal. 

Yours truly, 

B. II. NADAL. 
Washington, D. C, June 3d, 1865. 



DISCOURSE. 



" Merely ami truth arc met toj^cthcr, riglitcousness and peace have kissed 
each other." Psalm 85, 10, 



This psalm is a song of grateful joy upon the return of the Jews 
from their captivity in Babylon. It begins : " Lord thou hast been 
favorable to thy land ; thou hast brought back the captivity of 
Jacob ; thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people ; thou hast 
covered all tlieir sin." In tliis strain the liappy people proceed, 
mingling with their thanksgiving a prayer that they may be 
revived and saved ; that the divine wrath may not be drawn out 
to all generations, but that the land being delivered, his glory may 
dwell in it. 

The text is a thankful acceptance of the divine mercy in tlieir 
deliverance from slavery, and their return to their own country. 
It recognizes the divine hand, and aflirms the principles of the 
divine government. It seems to say : " We are here at homo 
ao-ain ; tliis is the country left us by our fatliors, who received it 
from the hand of God. Our palaces are in ruins, our temple a 
heap of rubbish, our national polity an exploded theory, our cap- 
ital a desolation ; the task of reconstruction with its immense 
burdens and terrible responsibilities, awaits us. We must re- 
build the waste places of Jerusalem ; the temple must spring 
up again under the trowels of our masons; our altar must again 
rise and smoke, and our government start afresh according to 
the pattern shown to Moses in the mount. In short, it is the 
Avork of reconstruction, to which the singers of this psalm feel 
themselves called, and the text affirms the principles on which 
they intend to rebuild their institutions, and establish the peace 
and happiness of the country. " iMercy and truth are met 
too-ether; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." That 
is, peace shall rise and spread and consolidate upon the founda- 
tions of truth and rigbteoiisness. softened and I)eautifie(l by 
mercy. 



It' these were the principles with which to rebuild ancient Israel, 
they are equally appropriate to the present day, and to our own 
history. We are in the very moment of pause between war and 
peace. We have demolished the rebellion, and possessed ourselves 
of the ground on which it was built. These heaps of brick and 
timber that disfigure the soil must be removed, and we must build 
again. If our Union is to last, the second temple is to surpass the 
glory of the first. In the work of reconstruction we must elimi- 
nate the error and the crime of the former construction. We must 
rebuild on the rocks of truth and justice, while we garnish the 
doors, windows, walls and columns of our re-edified temple with 
the soft and gentle blazonry of mercy. In such a building peace 
may make her permanent and contented home. 

In accordance with this view, our theme is expressed in the fol- 
lowing question, namely : What are the chief elements of national 
reconstruction; how shall we establish a just, and hence a perma- 
nent peace? Our text, in general terms, is the answer. Mercy 
and truth must be wed ; righteousness must underlie peace. 

Turn we then to these principles of reconstruction, and let us 
see them applied to the life of the nation. 

One of these principles is " truth ;" if we are to rebuild rightly, 
this principle dare not for one moment be ignored. What is it 
that has necessitated reconstruction I The answer is, what every 
civilized man knows by heart, namely, that two sections of the 
nation have been engaged in a deadly conflict for the last four 
years ; the bonds of national unity have been cut with the sword ; 
four thousand millions of property has been destroyed, a debt 
incurred of three thousand millions, and more than five hundred 
thousand lives have been sacrificed. The charriots of the rebellion 
are broken ; its President, caught in the disguise of an old woman, 
is a prisoner in one of the bomb-proofs at Fortress Monroe, and 
its hired assassins are undergoing a quiet trial for their lives. We 
are calm. The fever of the war has ceased. Even the grief and 
indignation in which the nation but recently both bathed and 
burned, are so far moderated as to leave our judgment free from 
passion ; at least, what still remains of passion serves only to purge 
us from party, and from earthly bias, that our decisions may be high- 
er, nobler, truer. Now, what have been the great principles of the 



just ended strugsrle ; what liave been the lies which the rebellion 
erected into a moloch, and bowed down to worship? What were 
the truths, if, indeed, truth has been witli us, for which the Union 
has been warring, bleeding, sacrificing? 

One of the great falsehoods around which the forces of the 
rebellion gathered, and by which it claimed to justify itself, is the 
well known doctrine of secession, now handed over to perpetual 
infamy by the war. The question between the nation and the rebels 
was, whether or not the United States was one nation or many ; 
whether our history on this continent had made us a distinct and 
organic nationality, to which the people had given their solemn 
sanction in the distinct utterances of the Constitution : or whether 
the individual States were nations, which in the constitution had 
entered into a mere treaty, which any one of them could withdraw 
from at its own sovereign pleasure. It is strange that sucii a dis- 
pute was possible ; if there had not been a definite end to serve, it 
never could have arisen. Almost as soon as the colonies had 
obtained a foothold on the continent, they began to unite for mutual 
sympathy and defence. Of one language, from one nation, sub- 
stantially of one religion, with the same enemy to resist, the 
same usurpations to repel, they were soon drawn closely 
together. And when the war of the Revolution came, it found 
the northern and southern colonies already fitted to each other 
like the blocks of Solomon's temple, which we are told were built 
together without the sound of a hammer. The American colo- 
nies were, in all material respects, of one growth ; in tiie war 
they had common sentiments, a common enemy, and were formally 
made 07ie bv their Continental Congress. They joined in the same 
noble declaration of independence ; they fought side by side in the 
same battles, and as one they conquered their liberties. The 
mother country regarded them not as separate foes, but as a single 
enemy, and when she was beaten, she did not acknowledge the 
independence of the States separately, but the independence of 
the nation. The triumph was national ; not sectional ; the leaders 
in the struggle were national. Tliey covered the whole country 
with their inlluencc, as the y took the wliolc country into their love 
and into tlieir plans. Wlr.i shall restrict Wnshiiigton, Franklin, 
Adams, JetVerson, Hancock and Carroll, to a particular American 



G 

locality ? Who knows anything of the flag of a separate State ? 
The national banner covered all the States with its folds, and 
poured on all tlie glory of its clustered stars. 

Tiiis natural and national unity awakened in some quarters fear 
of consolidation, and when the country began to put its life into 
more regular form there was at first an effort to preserve the spirit 
of nationality and at the same time to make the individual States 
sovereign. But the old articles of confederation under which 
our Union spent the few tirst years of its independent existence, 
were soon found inadequate. They established a Congress, but 
the Congress was not a legislature — it had no power of enforcing 
its own acts. It was only a consulting and advisory body ; sucli 
a contrivance did not and could not express the true sentiment of 
national oneness with which the country had come out of the re- 
volutionary war, and which was embodied in Washington and his 
companions. To meet this great want, to express the deep, broad 
sense of nationality which pervaded the soul of the country our 
present Constitution was formed. In it was uttered, in the strongest 
possible form, both the unity and supremacy of the whole pleople, 
considered not as States, but as people. They pronounced it their 
own work, wrought in their organic and popular capacity, and 
declared it, and the laws of Congress under it, to be the supreme 
law of the land, anything in State laws or State Constitutions to 
the contrary notwithstanding. Thus was felt and expressed and 
understood the great doctrine of our nationality and unity. The 
Constitution of the United States formed a supreme national 
government, which was none the less sacred because its powers 
were restricted to broad national purposes. 

It may indeed be said that we cannot claim for the ilodrine of 
the national unity the character of a great ethical, or even a^reat 
abstract political truth ; that all States haying a common history, a 
common language and a common religion are not necessarily under 
one government. In proof of this, we may be pointed to the many 
independent states of Germany and to the republics of ancient 
Greece. True enough ; but when the national unity has come to 
distinct consciousness, as it did in our early history ; when it has 
written itself down in the form of an organic supreme laws as it 
did in our (Constitution ; when it sets up a Supreme Court as the 



ulliniatc tribunal, when it comes to administer the oath of allegiance, 
by which presidents, judges, senators and members of Congress, 
solemnly acknowledge the authority of their States to be inferior 
to that of the Union ; — when all this takes place, then for the 
American people national unity becomes a fundamental principle, 
it underlies the whole national life, and in its oaths of office, and 
other forms of obligation, it reaches over into the sphere of ethics, 
so that the advocacy of secession becomes a crime, both against 
the supreme law of the Country and against the law of God ; it 
involves treason against the nation, and the prostitution of the 
conscience by perjury. 

Men frequently speak of political questions as though they 
could have no moral bearings, and denounce any allusion to such 
questions in the pulpit as political preaching. It is difficult to say 
who are the more silly, those who thus prate or those who arc 
scared by such talk away from a solemn duty. Politics indeed ! 
What is the meaning of the 23d Article of our creed which 
avouches the allegiance of our whole church to the government of 
the United States ? This is politics, of course, and aught to be 
handed over to these would-be censors of the pulpit and the re- 
ligious press, to be expunged. Let these thoughtless people know 
that every question that touches the practice of human life has its 
moral aspects. The grocer is confronted by the moral law when 
he weighs sugar and coffee, the dry goods' dealer when he handles 
his yard stick ; and both, when they come to write their accounts. 
They may weigh, measure, reckon falsely. Will the wisdom 
which talks of political preaching tell us that we must not preach 
against false weights and measures, against unjust accounts, against 
sanded sugar and watered molasses, nor against selling calicos of 
unstable colors with a promise they shall never fade, because in so 
doing we are getting out of the preacher's into the tradesman's 
sphere? The absurdity is manifest. Everyone knows that the 
practice of common life has its moral side, its relations to the law 
of God, and stands amenable to the christian conscience as utter- 
ing itself in the pulpit. 

Thus too is it with political questions ; when tliey are practical 
they touch the splu-re of morals ; they bccom-j yoked with sin or 
righteousness, and merit the rebuke or the praise of the christian 



pulpit. Secession gave the lie to a fundamental truth ; it set 
itself up for the place of that truth. It armed itself for deadly 
grapple with that truth to destroy it. It has had its flag and its 
armies, and dealt its hlows, but the great American, constitutional 
truth of the Union, has triumphed. Now what we wish to say is, 
that in reconstructing, in establishing peace for the coming ages of 
American growth, we must have due regard to the great truth of 
national unity. If the holy and blessed truth of national unity 
and supremacy is to meet returning rebels with the kiss of mercy, 
the salutation must be most discreet. The holy truth must be- 
ware of dalliance ; it must not lay tbe locks of its strength on the 
lap of the sorceress. The old idea of State sovereignty must 
perish with the rebellion by which it was begotten. Let it be un- 
derstood, once for all, that the States have no rights but such as 
are consistent with the absolute, indestructible unity of the nation ; 
and let the silly idea that a citizen's first allegiance is due to his par- 
ticular State, be hencelorth remembered only as a demon of false- 
hood, now forever exorcised, who, having slain his hundreds of 
thousands, has returned to his own place. Let every State in the 
Union, at the earliest opportunity, follow the example of Mary- 
land, and insert into its Constitution the great truth of llie suprem- 
acy and sovereignty of the Union. Let the rebel States now 
returning from their bloody wild-goose chase after secession be 
aided in ridding themselves of the very memory of their error; let 
them be kept in friendly military care, and every proper form and 
degree of assistance given them in reconstruction, hooping them 
up if necessary, with military iron, into the Union, until the sun- 
dered parts grow togetlier again. 

Another great truth over which this war has been waged is much 
broader and grander than that of national unity ; it is the higher 
unity of humanity. The first great truth is national, the second 
is universal. The first aihrms the United States to be one coun- 
try, the second declares mankind to be one family. The first 
truth is the unity of the nation ; the first falsehood is secession. 
The second and greater truth is the unity of the human family, 
the second falsehood, including almost every possible wrong, is 
slavery. 

I will not insult your intelligence by jiroving the proposition. 



\ 



9 

that man is man ; that common human attributes make a common 
human brothorliood. The simple fact tliat men are men, consti- 
tutes humanity a unit. Now what part of this human brotherhood 
shall be owners, and what part shall be owned? Suppose all men 
now free, and slavery al)out to be reinaugurated ; what tribes 
would you select as havin<j no rights ? Where would any just or 
honest man pick out his slave? The very question is monstrous. 
Enslave a free man ! That would be man-stealing. In that pre- 
cisely began the slavery of this country. We have called seces- 
sion the first falsehood ; we only meant that we would mention it 
first in order. 'J'he primal falsehood of our late struggle, that 
which, entrenching itself in avarice, nursing itself in tyranny and 
cruelty, pulling up itself with pride, began the war to secure and 
perpetuate its life, was slavery. It was the deliberate assertion of 
the naked principle of force as against the rights of a helpless 
people. It deliberately asserted that men could and ought to be 
owned, on the simple ground that they were black, or any other 
color than regular Caucasian ; and that even that favorite and 
dominant color might be owned where a drop of the proscribed 
blood could be found in the veins. 

This idea met resistance. It was questioned in the pulpit, in 
the halls of legislation, in the newspapers, and then reasserted 
again and again, with ever waxing violence, by its advocates. By 
repeated open assaults and flank movements, it gained ground in 
the Government ; it secured more and more territory ; it climbed 
up to the highest judicial eminence, and at last demanded to be 
made national. Finally, it fought, and that with characteristic 
disregard of morals. It was but natural that those who began with 
denying the rights of a part of the human race, who refused letters, 
marriage, parental and filial relations, property and liberty, to mil- 
lions of people ; who sold men, women and children like beasts, 
should be reckless of the lives of prisoners. A lie, especially a 
great one, reduced to practice, necessarily becomes cruel. It 
perverts the conscience ; it is, in itself, a sort of moral or internal 
perjury j it foreswears all obligations, except to confederates in 
crime. It was thus with the denial of human rights by those lately 
in rebellion against the United States. What hate, unrelentiiiir 
as the grave, they have displayed. Cast one glance, only one, at 



10 

prison life among them, at Andersonville, at Salisbury, at Rich- 
mond ; remember the dead line, and weep for the hundredth time 
over the starved thousands of our Union soldiers. Recall Fort 
Pillow and Lawrence ; turn your eye toward the military court now 
in session for the trial of the greatest, smallest, meanest criminals the 
world ever saw ; see Richmond and Canada conspiring for the 
accomplishment of the bloody deed ; and finally, behold Dr. 
Blackburn at work by bribery, in combination with the Canada 
rebels, to deluge all the great cities of the North with yellow fever 
and small pox ; even sending an infected box as a special present 
to the Chief Magistrate of the United States. 

We have here a pitch of wickedness, almost transcending human 
thought. Look ! the greatest civil war of history begun for slavery; 
sixty thousand purposely starved Union prisoners ; every great 
city in the Union intended, to be filled with plague ; the plague 
itself positively packed up and sent forward ; and finally, the 
murder of the President and all his cabinet with other loyal 
leaders, plotted by the slave confederacy — by its cabinet and by 
its agents in Canada, and the most fearful part of the plot actually 
carried out. It is stupendous, it is overwhelming, past belief; but 
there is Ford's theatre; there are the murderers; there is Dr. 
Blackburn, and there is the evidence. Of all these inconceivable 
monstrosities this lie against human rights of which we have 
spoken, is the parent. If men loved and worshipped a system 
that wronged profoundly, infinitely wronged four millions of peo- 
ple, turned them into dumb driven cattle, wliy should it be thought 
strange that they should do these otlier things, or indeed anything? 
It is not strange. It is only the adder coming forth from the egg. 
It is only the lie of slavery trutbfiiUy expressing itself ; it is a 
coininuiiity corrupted l)y a great falsehood, trying by the strain ot 
every nerve to establish tbat falsehood on tlie ruins of the truth 
which it contradicts. 

The affirmation and the denial of human rights have now been 
engaged in a deadly struggle for four years. Liberty has triumphed. 
The bloody temples of the rebellion are levelled witli the ground. 
The great truth of human lilierty as a natural right, has been prac- 
tically vindicated. In all the States that rebelled, that declared by 
their course that slavery was divine, there now*remains not a single 



11 

slave. We Iiave bncn tested, and ioiiiul capable, by God's 
blessing, of upholding the truth. If the war had ended sooner, 
the sacred truth of liberty as a human birtliright had l)('en only 
partially vindicated. But God protracted the struggle, giving us 
only partial success, and encouraging the foe to fight on until his 
ranks were decimated, and his resources utterly exhausted. Wo 
had a leader, a God-given ruler, wise as a serpent, and harmless as 
a dove, who knew how to wait and how to advance. He felt him- 
self firmlv bound by liis oath of office, and yet ardently "desired 
that all men might be free." He hoped and waited for the time to 
come when the. official oath and the obligations and sympathies 
of humanity would unite in demanding the word of lil)eration. 
He read the heavens for the handwriting of God, and found it. 
He wrote the great truth of the struggle, the divine, humanitarian 
truth of liberty, in the form of an emancipation proclamation. 
That blow, that pen scrape, was mightier than half a million of 
swords; it was a successful appeal to heaven, and a solemn assur- 
ance to all foreign nations ; it eiuled his own doubts, and settled 
beyond revocation tlu; policy of the Government. The heart of 
the nation, the intellect of the nation was at once and forever iden- 
tilied with the highest political and ethical truth of the earthly 
human life. Magna charta shrivels with shame before the emanci- 
pation proclamation ; the declaration of independence was a brave 
proposition ; tlie emancipation proclamation translated it into glori- 
ous, eloquent action. As long as liistory sliall gather and garner her 
treasures, she shall add fresli lustre to the name of him who penned 
the emancipation i)roclamation. 

By a proclamation of the present Chief Mngistrate, the emanci- 
pation proclamation is virtually made law throughout the con- 
quered States. This great truth of human rights therefore comes out 
of the war victorious. Slavery, instead of winning the stake for which 
she played the game of war, has only committed suicide ; she 
meant to assert her nationality, instead of which she is blotted out 
of existence. What now shall we do with liberty ? We answer 
we must use her in reconstruction. Tlie ark has outridden the 
storm, she must now be the home of all and the sanctuary ot the 
oppressed. We must see to it that in restoring the broken-down 
governments of the South liberty shall preside. No pro-slavery 



12 

element must enter conventions, or touch constitutions or legisla- 
tures. God has given sacred liberty in trust to us for the future 
age. 

But if truth is to be an element in the renewed Union so also is 
righteousness, that is, justice. We are not only to guard the truths 
of national unity and universal liberty and to prolong and per- 
petuate them in the land ; we must come to the practice of them. 
We must "lay righteousness to the line and judgment to the 
plummet." The truth is beautiful, it is fine to " point a moral or 
adorn a tale;" but it demands to be more than a well-preserved 
fossil, or a beautiful picture. It must be a massive hammer in the 
hand of justice to break in pieces hoary abuses. Righteousness 
is truth applied to practical purposes, to the redress of wrongs, to 
giving the oppressed their due, to the punishment of persistent 
wrong-doers. 

The new status offers a fair field for the redress of griev- 
ances. The black man now free, must not be trammelled by 
injurious legislation. Like men of other complexions he must 
be allowed a fair field. We must not treat him as though God had 
cursed him black, when we ourselves by our own wickedness have 
established the connection between bondage and color. It has been 
but little more than a dozen centuries since our British forefathers 
were brutal savages, often exposed for sale in the markets of im- 
perial Rome. If we have come to such culture from such savagery, 
what may not be done by the freedmen of this country, all born 
among us, and rapidly advancing in civilization ? Only let us treat 
them justly and even generously, as those who in this war have been 
our friends to a man, who to the number of two hundred thousand, 
in many a fierce battle, have vindicated their patriotism against the 
foe, and their manhood against the fears of their friends and the 
sneers and reproaches of their enemies. In proportion to papula- 
tion the blacks have perhaps furnished more soldiers for the Union 
than the whites. And in some of the conquered States almost the 
only friends of our cause are the freedmen. Shall we proscribe 
them while we labor in vain to whitewash men reeking with trea- 
son, iiitt) patriots and citizens? We liope not. Let righteousness 
look down, nay come down from hcavcMi and dwell: let the new 
peace come, arm in arm, and heart to heart, with justice. God 



will no more endure our proscri{)tion of the Irceclnian than our 
retention of him in bonds. 

But if there is a justice of remuneration there is another of 
retribution. God has already visited the sin of secession, the 
crime of rebellion, the iniquity of slavery with failure and over- 
throw. The mad Babel of these wicked builders has fallen crush- 
ingly on their own heads. As a people they are overwhelmed. 
This is the justice which divine Providence metes out. But if 
God has avenged the trampled principles of his government, He has 
still left something for us. Civil government is a divine ordinance ; 
it holds the sword of God, as well as his power of mercy and pro- 
tection. The very life and heart of this nation have been struck 
at by traitors ; and while we would pity and pardon the masses, 
not to punish the leaders were to invite future disorder and 
future treason. Let there be as little punishment as may be con- 
sistent with the sanctity of law, but no less. 

Old Sir Thomas Brown pitied the Devil, perhaps as a fallen 
angel. Almost every noble nature pities a (alien foe. As one 
rebel chief after another is brought in a prisoner, I own I feel 
my heart moved with natural compassion. But then righteousness 
demands its place in the reconstructed edifice. And besides, the 
great leaders of the rebellion have been so intoxicated by pride 
and ambition, have been so filled with high flown conceit of their 
own greatness and superiority that they would perhaps despise the 
nation's pity, and consider it only another jiroof of weakness and 
inferiority. See what delectable impudence the rebels now in 
Canada have lately poured forth in their letters. The letter of 
Jacob Thompson, recently printed in the New York Tribune, if 
it had only been less coarse, might have been dictated by the 
arch-fiend himself. Mercy for such men were cruelty to law and 
ordec, and an insult to the memory of our brothers that sleep in 
the fresh graves dug by rebellion. 

No, we cannot rebuild our Union without justice ; it would lark 
stately grandeur and imposing dignity ; it would lack that bright 
awe-inspiring purity which attracts virtue while it strikes dismay 
to the hearts of all classes of criminals. We must reconstruct 
with justice, justice toward men of all complexions, justice remu- 
nerative, and justice retributive. 



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